With the increasing pressures of climate change, renewable alternatives are needed to displace our dependence on petroleum. Succinic acid is one such platform chemical that may be produced at the industrial scale from the biological conversion of refined sugars, as well as through several robust, native succinic-acid producing microbes from lignocellulosic sugars. Following biological production, succinic acid may be catalytically converted to expand its potential market applications. Of note, succinic acid can be catalytically reduced to 1,4-butanediol (BDO), which has a market value of $3.50 per kg (2011 USD) and an annual demand of over 1,370,000 tonnes. BDO is heavily used in the plastic industry for numerous applications including polyesters, polyurethanes, and polyethers. Preliminary life cycle analysis has also shown that succinic acid-derived BDO has potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when compared to petrochemical routes for BDO production. Thus, catalysts that enable the efficient and/or high-yield conversion of succinic acid to BDO remains a desirable objective for enabling the conversion of bio-based intermediates to useful fuels and/or chemicals. Monocarboxylic acids, such as acetic acid, lactic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid, can be produced at high titers from fermentation of lignocellulosic sugars and the corresponding alcohols produced by hydrogenation are useful fuels and/or chemicals, such as ethanol, propanediol, n-propanol, and n-butanol. For example, propionic acid can be reduced to n-propanol. Propanol is versatile three-carbon molecule, which can further be catalytically transformed to value-added chemicals like acrylonitrile ($2.75 per kg, 2008 USD), polypropylene ($1.50 per kg, 2008 USD), and propylene oxide ($2.21 per kg, 2008 USD), all via a propylene intermediate. The routes towards producing these value-added chemicals in an economically feasible way rely heavily on a high-yielding hydrogenation step to convert propionic acid to n-propanol.